


Sunday

by sleepdrunk



Series: sunday [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Blanket Permission, Dream Sharing, Experimental Style, Hallucinations, Happy Ending, M/M, Physics, Podfic & Podficced Works, Quantum Mechanics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 10:55:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22968850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepdrunk/pseuds/sleepdrunk
Summary: Now, as you may suspect, a naturally occurring hallucinogenic substance would not normally have much of an effect on a—  a—  a displaced former wotsit of theShamayim.You’d be correct.But this time, as the universe around the post-celestial pair begins to pulse and jive as though some stoned genius in a beatnik club had slid his arse over the bench and placed hot fingers to the keyboard, Crowley noted distantly that something was different this time. The last five hundred years were fun for a reason, and that reason was Crowley’s relationship with reality—  in sum, if he wants the drugs to work, they work.Right at the moment though, he is not in charge of any reality, in any universe.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: sunday [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1652557
Comments: 9
Kudos: 11
Collections: Good Omens Big Bang 2019





	1. The Simulation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ximeria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ximeria/gifts).



> [ banner by moi podcast by ](https://lovelybydecay.tumblr.com/post/611369723490353152/placeholder-for-masterpost)[ximeria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ximeria)
> 
> beta by [meinposhbastard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meinposhbastard) and [beautygraceouterspace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautygraceouterspace)
> 
> a _huge_ thank you to ximeria, meinposhbastard, and bgos for all of your help and guidence with this work. i couldn't have done it without you.

IN THE BEGINNING God sits down at her desk and turns on her PC

In her bare apartment (FORMLESS HEAVENS), before she begins, the Almighty snaps her fingers and makes a Gabriel when she wants the mail sent out and

_snap_

makes a Michael when she hears a burglar.

_“Michael?”_

_“Yes, my Queen, El, eyeh, my Being my Mother of the Hive, my Lady, the existing one…?”_

_“I hunger.” Michael dials the pizza place._

>START  
OPTIONS  
ABOUT  
CREDITS  
>NEW GAME  
SAVED GAMES  
LOADING PRESETS  
…  
CLOSING OFF WORMHOLES  
…  
MILKYING THE WAY  
…

LOADING

…

LOADING

…

LOADING

…

_PLAY  
_ _OPTIONS  
_ _QUIT  
_ _> START  
_“Huh.”  
 _NAME: ehyeh asher ehyeh  
_ _> ENTER_

_[by ticking this box you acknowledge that this is my name forever the name you shall call me from generation to generation]_

“Oh, Michael. What do you wanna bet I can make a lamb in this thing?”

_FINE-TUNE FOR INTELLIGENT LIFE?_

_YES / NO / >RANDOMIZE _

_shit where was that…. shit, fuck… back back… ah_

_PRESETS_

_> ADVANCED_

_CONDITIONAL OPERATORS_

_if (information at core of physical reality, and every particle or field derives existence from observation) then (‘ain’t no intelligent consciousness gonna form anyway’)_

_(do the quarks spin at random, then?)_

_(is there a proto-consciousness?)_

_SYNCHRONIZE VIBRATIONS?_

In that case, better go ahead and make eyeballs.

_(dashed odd how creating life in Her image on one planet, at least eventually, wound up churning out some officious, duck-billed bureaucratic quantum engineers on another.)_

_CHEAT CODES  
_ _LAWS OF PHYSICS HAVE SYMMETRY_  
 _EXPLICIT OR >SPONTANEOUS BROKEN SYMMETRY  
_ _> USE EVER-JIGGLING JELL-O_

God begins the simulation. It begins with molecules, bouncing around in the void. It’s boring. She picks up a glass-- cool, solid, with a base that is dense beyond comprehension. It is filled with life-giving water and she drinks thirstfully until it is empty.

She puts the glass down in front of her and it slips through her fingers a fraction of a second before she meant it to, and it hits the desk with a thud. Rather than shattering, or nothing happening, or dribbles of water shorting out her keyboard, there’s an incomprehensibly bright flash of light at the base of the glass.

_Oops._

She squints and looks closer at the bottom of the glass.

It’s getting bigger. She doesn’t know what to do. She puts it in the freezer, takes it out, puts it back in, takes it out again. It gets bigger every time.

She takes a nap for 380,000 years and THEN finally turns on the cosmic lamp.

_In the dingy hallway, an archangel turns on the fucking nonzero energy vacuum and startles her._

And then, the glass is bigger and contains multitudes. It’s filled with so many little galaxies that it might as well be the pond water full of eukaryotes and things with flagella swimming around that she will create soon.

At some point during this process, her microwave explodes. It leaves black, charred gunk all over the walls and floor of her apartment. When she makes the angels clean it off, they find concentric circles. Everywhere, like the rings of great oak, telling a story about the Before.

(when she becomes very frustrated, she sometimes runs an end-times simulation. it’s not her fault that prophets, the ones able to pull back the veil, peek their heads in and catch glimpses of it.

 _“christ, they’re fragile,”_ she thinks as she sweeps up the skull fragments from her living room carpet.

(the universe-- that is to say, this one-- is going too fast. like it’s excited. perhaps it has an imaginary friend or a black cat underfoot in the hallway at three in the morning and maybe if it fails, if the dark matter fails, it’ll stop going out and fast and go in and in and in and compress itself into a little ball and be the new Old One)

filaments surround voids like the

_brave o’erhanging firmament,_

_this majestical roof fretted with golden fire_

_surrounds this goodly frame_

have energy, will pressure

she clicks around. particles bump into each other and one day there is plant life and rushing streams and glorious sunrises and the prokaryotes get wise to the idea of a cell nucleus and membrane and then one day, fins and then one day man gets uppity and must be reminded that just as they befalleth beasts: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea

and dust particles have low energy and exert no pressure

and god thought, well that’s kind of nice. meanwhile i have all of these arsehole angels bouncing around in my apartment and i really am feeling the pressure; what with them pacing around and bumping into walls and each other and making it hotter so

some of them have to go

(the cup bubbles for an eternity and eventually fills her apartment)


	2. Fairy Ring

_(Well the moon is high and so am I  
_ _The stars are out and so will I be  
_ _pretty soon)_

They say that Evil never sleeps, and it’s true.

Evil is too busy ruminating on the past, fixated on ruining everyone’s fun. Evil really should try getting on a regular sleep schedule; maybe increase its protein intake. Evil could use a nap.

The demon Crowley, on the other hand, has dozed off and has begun to snore. He’s also rather stoned. He’s been smoking weed in the woods alone for a few hours now— some of the more destructive human vices caused him to lose a large portion of the 1980s. He really and truly couldn’t think of a better thing to do than get stoned for the first weekend after the apocalypse.

Essentially, he’s quit a job and it has just begun to sink in that they can’t-- and don’t want to-- call him for another shift, a cursing here or a tempting there that some other schmuck called in sick for. So he’s harvested some of his stock and gotten to it.

Pot plants were rather forthcoming with the necessary if you only provided them with a nice sunlamp and some fertilizer. They didn’t take kindly to harsh words, as Crowley had found out. Once, after a particularly nasty dressing down for leaf yellowing, a White Russian named Goldie had taken it upon herself to get up and play Crowley’s XBox. She’d beaten all of his high scores, and traipsed all over the flat to boot, leaving a mess of black potting soil in her wake.

After that, he’d learned his lesson.

Tonight’s batch is one of Goldie’s descendants. He’s been feeling a little bit _watched_ , ever since Hell got wise to him and the angel. Even though he knows they’ll be left alone— for now— he’s got this itchy, oppressive malaise crawling all over him that he can’t seem to shake. So, being the sort of demon that he is, and having observed several millennia of humans who knew how to check out of their own brains for a few hours when things got too _thingish,_ Crowley had taken quite a few rips from the garish glass snake bong, and passed out cold.

Of course, he’s left the flat behind. He misses it a little; the stench of shrewd professionalism that lingered around the realtor fresh in his mind. He can’t imagine returning, and yet there’s a hole in his mind where the concept of his own place usually lives; a sort of nakedness that wasn’t there before as a rank-and-file, blow-bad-ideas-in-your-ears demon, and could only come to be after he’d tasted independence and a sense of home.

Speaking of home, he does at least have his sparkling beast of a Bentley. And, of course, the cabin he now shares with Aziraphale. Crowley is laid out flat on his back with his head resting on a rolled up jumper. The jumper probably belongs to the angel— it’s a soft ivory colour with a shawl collar, and Crowley is ignoring the scratchiness at the back of his neck.

The angel is looking for the jumper at present, not once considering that it has been borrowed without permission. Demonic habits do indeed die hard.

A distinctly uncouth snore and the rolling of his head off the sweater jars Crowley awake. He blinks and groans, reaching up to smear chunky crusts from the corners of his eyes. He was enjoying that sleep, but the night air has grown cooler, and gooseflesh erupts on his arms. He sits up, and pulls the jumper over his t-shirt. He looks up at the black sky, awash with celestial bodies uninterrupted by the lights of any metropolis. Just above him hangs a gibbous moon, glowing with the cold light of midnight.

“There you are,” comes a soft voice behind him. It’s the angel, and Crowley refuses to feel guilty about the warmth that washes over him in his presence. “I’ve been looking all over for you— and there’s my sweater!”

“Hullo, Aziraphale,” he returns languidly.

“Ah.” The angel smiles at him, open and unguarded. Toothy. The sides of his mouth upturned, the corners of his eyes wrinkling. A _commedia_ mask of a face, more expressive somehow in its concealment.

Oh Christ, it was _Cherubic_ wasn’t it. Of course it was.

“What did you say?” Aziraphale asked, now seated. He didn’t take his eyes off of the stars.

“Nothing.”

Blessedly, the angel lets him drop the subject.

“Is that, um— ” Aziraphale starts. His back is comically straight, the way it goes when the angel feels the need to broach an awkward subject, and he wiggles his shoulders. Idly, Crowley wonders if he’d act the same way in his true form. “‘S that the last of your Russian stuff?”

Humming in acknowledgement, Crowley smiles and reaches a long, lazy arm for the bong. He sits up, and digs a small pink grinder and a lighter out of the pocket of Aziraphale’s sweater, earning him a soft _tsk._

Crowley packs the bowl, and begins the juggling act of inhaling while lighting the corner. His eyes dart around, sneaking glances of the angel’s face in the pale moonlight. The air is heavy with summer, like the very atmosphere is pregnant with some sort of nasty plan— one last _fuck you_ before Demeter must turn over her daughter to the darkness.

The lighter sparks. He inhales. “Shit,” and a gasp. He tries again. The lighter sparks properly, but it’s trembling in a new breeze. Finally, the bong’s bubbling proves fruitful, and Crowley’s lungs are once more filled and spasming.

“Here,” he creaks out, still holding in the smoke, and he hands over the parapherna. Their fingers touch, and Crowley flashes the angel a troublemaker’s smile as the thick smoke sneaks out between his teeth.

The effect is completely ruined when Crowley starts coughing. Aziraphale tries not to laugh as he takes his fill.

“Do quit staring,” says the angel, throat constricted. He exhales. “You bloody imp.”

“Imp?” Crowley returns. “Ha—” he looks up into the black sky. His teeth are bared like his soul, smiling cheeks infecting the corners of his eyes and deepening the ruts in his immortal skin. “Haven’t heard that in a good, long while.”

_“Hellion.”_

“Oh! Good one. Not anymore, though.”

“ _Cacodemon._ ”

“Well, now we’re getting somewhere.” He reaches for the glass again. “You… er. Wingèd do-gooder.”

“Oh, brilliant.”

The tickle of the high runs through their bodies.

When the moon reaches its apex, the angel breaks their silence.

The sweater has made its way back around Aziraphale’s shoulders.

“Say, Crowley—” he gets a sleepy _hmph?_ in response. “—Were these mushrooms here when I got here? Could swear I didn’t see them earlier.”

“Oh, I— I suppose they weren’t. Strange.”

An understatement. Moments prior the clearing was filled with nothing more than cool, undulating emerald grass. Now, the pair are surrounded by a thick ring of mushrooms, several fruiting bodies deep. They’re caramel coloured, with slender white stems, and they glisten in the moonlight

Crowley, ever the idiot— he’s never claimed otherwise— fingers an inviting fungus. The stem comes free from the ground with a subtle, satisfying _pop,_ and he bungs it wholesale into his mouth.

He chews thoughtfully.

If a _sióg_ laughs, long and heartily from the belly, in the forest, and you’re too high to hear it—

“Aziraphale,” he says, but it comes out of his full mouth as “ _Z-phul_ ”. Aziraphale doesn’t respond, his eyes trained on the _o’erhanging firmament_.

Chew, chew. For such a tiny mushroom, it’s taking rather a while.

 _“Zrh--”_ Munch. Swallow. _“Angel.”_

He’s rewarded with a “ _hmm?_ ”

“Oy.” Crowley plucks another morsel and flicks it over.

Now, as you may suspect, a naturally occurring hallucinogenic substance would not normally have much of an effect on a— a— a displaced former _wotsit_ of the _Shamayim_. You’d be correct.

But this time, as the universe around the post-celestial pair begins to pulse and jive as though some stoned genius in a beatnik club had slid his arse over the bench and placed hot fingers to the keyboard, Crowley noted distantly that something was different this time. The last five hundred years were fun for a reason, and that reason was Crowley’s relationship with reality— in sum, if he wants the drugs to work, they work.

Right at the moment though, he is _not_ in charge of any reality, in any universe.

Right now, there’s a consciousness, and another consciousness, and— a— a _venn diagram of consciousnessessess because_ mine _is here, right, Angel, and yours is here and they kind of interwotsit_ here, _but do you feel that— that— that— third?_

“Crowley?”

“Ah. Wasn’t certain the mouth was moving,” Crowley answers.

Crowley is not wrong. There’s a shape over there in the woods— something tall, masculine, and raw, and blacker than Boöte’s void _(is that where he left his handbag?)_ \-- and he’s doubling over with laughter, slapping his knee and his name is Oberon.

 _So that’s where the obsidian bits of before went, thought God, when the first of the_ Aos Si _flipped her the bird. After that, she never forgot the bread on the window sill._

_Now who’s Risen, bitch?_

“Crowley, I don’t think we should be here…” Aziraphale says, but trails off, eyes fixated on his own hands, which he turns over in front of his face. Heavy, wet smoke twirls off of them as he does so. “We shouldn’t be here. We need to leave. I’m— ” he puffs his cheeks out and exhales, eyes popping. Giggles. “Well, I can’t seem to move. I’m immobile, is what I am. I must’ve looked back, and— ” hands. Smoke. Whirling. The angel laughs, bells ring, and out come the wings. “My dear,” he laughs and laughs, “I’m a pillar of salt…”

“Well marshal my armies and lead me into your valley.”

“ _What?_ ”

Aziraphale stares, blinking slowly over parched eyes, trying to comprehend. Before him, Crowley shimmers; warp wiggling toward weft. Crowley’s snake eyes glow and shift in hue and dance.

“I need to go to sleep,” he says.

* * *

_“I need to go to sleep_.” The words filter down the valley with the wind and into Oberon’s ears. He needn’t wait for physics to deliver acoustic news, but he enjoys the process. Inhaling deeply through his nose, his chest expands with swirling chaos. He extends to his full height— the trees, overseeing foreign shores, the mountains, over God’s third knuckle—

With a _snap_ , he exhales and is back in the forest, and his People have joined him.

 _“Cobweb. Moth._ Lovely to see you.” Oberon dusts the stars off his chest. “Appears we have some visitors tonight.”

Puck’s there too and he sharpens his teeth with a flint.

“God’s original bovverers? Tossing off the old ways?” He pops his tongue. “The _nerve.”_

“Disappointed, but not surprised,” offers Moth, who folds her arms under her bosom. “What shall we do with them?”

Leaves whisper to each other. A pair of hedgehogs get the fuck out of Dodge. Titania swans into the picture, pointed toes leading her wide hips, artful hands twisting out from delicate shoulders, sending sparks swirling around her frame.

“I’ve got a few ideas.”


	3. War/Fall

They stumble home to the cottage. As soon as Aziraphale’s swimming head hits the pillow, he is swept away into a churning mess of memory and dream.

The door creaks open.

An angel of the Lord looks down over the precipice and thinks about Newtonian mechanics.

His love is nothing but a black speck in the distance; down, down. He can’t hear his cries anymore but he feels them.

_Were your questions more important than my heart?_

_Was it freedom you wanted?_

The angel thinks about apples. Apples and falling. Back to the Newtonian side of things. An apple fell on Newton and he described the physics of what Crowley was experiencing now. Crowley ate an apple, to beat the metaphor with a stick. It’s the Knowing makes you fall.

_a pool of boiling_

_sulfur_

_it didn’t make you cruel  
I’m __not_ NICE

There’s ice on the angel’s heart; frost rather. It’s there on the surface of his GOD GIVEN

(HEAVEN ISSUED)

heart because the core is frozen solid

_I know the body’s Heaven issued but it’s grown some feelings and I’d really rather not do a requisition report right now_

_REQUESTED BY: ERA:_

_DEPARTMENT: CHARGE TO:_

_**PURPOSE OF USE: PURPOSE OF USE:** _

**_PURPOSE OF USE:_ **

**_PURPOSE OF USE:_ **

**_PURPOSE OF USE:_ **

**_PURPOSE OF USE:_ **

He never had an answer for that last one.

The Crowley-speck was still there. Snake shape. He wondered why they’d let him watch, given his proclivity to acquire feelings.

_“Can’t lose any more men, there bud! Now I know you’re gonna miss him, but rules are rules. It’s for the best.” Hair ruffles from a nineteen-eighties Business Dad_

_the eighties don’t come for a while but what is a while in a Heaven that has no top and no bottom and no form and no time and no place yet Crowley hits the ground somehow somehow and hissing and bubbling and a sickening thump and the heart that might not belong to Aziraphale but has nonetheless adopted him_

breaks a little

* * *

Crowley wants nothing but the world for Aziraphale, but he can’t have that: that plodding, teary-eyed moping version of the Fall.

Angels were ethereal in that the literary section of Heaven’s library was dull enough to knock a person out cold. Poetry like a chloroform rag. Blessed with a _(‘Blessed’? Hah. Hard-fought, more like)_ nine-life-pack of curiosity, Aziraphale was different, and for that reason only, he must not be allowed to wallow in fantasy.

 _Snakes and Ladders was offensive,_ he thinks _. There weren’t any ladders up from the Pit, and you’d better buy him dinner before he let you ride him all the way down to Hell. So was the Basilisk in that-- that witch-children thingummy-- that was the one book banning by the Church he condoned. So are a disturbing number of cowboy boots. So was the phrase_ apple of my eye. _Apple of my flat cornea, a curse from God as though_

Crowley takes off his sunglasses (SHEDS HIS BRILLE. FINALLY. THAT WAS ITCHY.) and puts them in a dish by the front door. He moults his wool overcoat and laughs at the memory of the time he’d left an intact exuvia lying around at the bookshop. He hadn’t known Aziraphale could hit a pitch that high.

That night was Hell. The questions were asked, the Almighty was pestered. She left the game and went to bed and had a fever dream (life had been created but her apartment was still hot) and the concept of torment was created.

Yes, Aziraphale can be allowed his comforts. He can have his tea, the tannins soothed by milk and honey, the likes of which were enough to sate the old gods, but Crowley’s pain is not his to smooth over. The guise of the weeping lover on the balcony is not his to put on.

* * *

There is another door. Crowley tries it, wrestling the brass handle, but it’s no use. Then, out of the corner of his eye, walks a figure-- a shock of white, curly hair. Before he can turn and get a good glimpse, the lock clicks open, and he is sucked inside.

* * *

“How can you expect me to just give up on God?” he had asked. Pleaded.

“Give up on-- give up on God? Like God is some bloody troubled teenager? Aziraphale, God is not your problem. The apocalypse was a no-go. There are no rules anymore.”

_He who made kittens, put snakes in the grass_

“Well, I feel like a deserter. I know you don’t understand.”

“No, you’re right. I bloody don’t understand.”

And so, Crowley had been left to his own devices in a clearing in the woods, seen only by the face of the gibbous moon and a myriad of tiny eyeballs, rustling and blinking in the surrounding trees.

“I’m not damned.” Silence. “I’m not.”

The long grass around him shivered in the breeze, shifting like a green silk flag.

He growled to himself. He was still damned, wasn’t he? Paradigm shift or no, there was no getting away from that. It stuck to his essence like a bad tattoo. Rage built inside him, poker-hot and righteous, like Seraphim come to spread a Glorious message. It coiled and roiled, like lava; if he were to exhale he would choke on volcanic ash. Tears burned his closed eyes and he ripped up the grass in front of him and ground it to a green paste under his fingers.

The nightingales began to sing, but it sounded a hell of a lot like _Holy, Holy, Holy,_ and he realized that no one was listening.


	4. Chapter 4

Crowley sits in front of a lighted mirror. The bulbs are hot and they buzz, hurting his eyes-- absinthe last night had been a mistake. Good thing he has another snootful lined up. He looks at the table in front of him, littered with pots of creams and powders. He knows where he is, but it’s been a dog’s age since he’s seen this particular wart on the bottom of Berlin’s dirty foot.

He’s aware of the year. It’s 1926. He’s also aware that he’s dreaming.

Selecting a pot of white pigment-- nothing like lead poisoning for breakfast-- he begins to paint his face. The greasy pigment slides across his skin-- rough, and greasy, and scratchy with stubble on the jaw and under his nose. He tips up his chin and continues on; the pressure against his Adam’s apple making him sputter and cough. He powders the paint, buffs it with a dirty puff. Next, he rouges his cheeks and blacks his eyes. There are about two dozen others in the room with him, but he barely takes notice-- they register as barely more than puffs of smoke anyway, corporal shapes with the ghost of a motive still clinging to a memory.

“Hi, baby,” coos a voice in his ear.

Aziraphale, resplendent in a beaded shift and t-strap mary janes, kisses him on the cheek.

“You bugger,” Crowley says with a wink. “Better not have screwed my rouge with that horrendous pink lipstick of yours.”

The show goes off like it always did. Crowley, his earthly body slipping down the stairs in silks and a spray of feathers and heels. While the spotlight is on him, this hole in the wall is the Taj Mahal. He is cheered on by a packed house of finery fashioned from illusion and hand-me-downs; sewing kits and turned coats, but the confidence in those fibres is fit to suit the king. His legs are petted, his _nom de guerre_ chanted, his bra is stuffed with bills.

He loses sight of Aziraphale and, after the crowds have stumbled home, he takes his stinking, sweaty body outside for a smoke.

It’s raining. The water sluices down Crowley’s face, over his oily skin, leaping off of his soaked eyelashes and onto his cheeks. The cold creeps in under his tattered fur coat like the loneliness did, years ago. The loneliness stayed, and so did the cold. He’s alone in this dreary city; a scaley husk of a demon on the best of days. New city, new name. New skin, old snake.

He looks up at a wall of televisions-- a prochronism, but who has time to worry about that-- flickering pixelated reality behind a glass wall of a closed shop. It’s no roaring fireplace, but mayhem has always kept him warm.

 _You fuckers,_ he thinks. _You piss-ants, you infants, you wastes of skin--_ A landmine explodes on-screen in the upper left hand; a child screams on the one in centre. Flick flick, blood on three out of nine. Sand, lush forests. Men. Guns. Planes. _Hell is indeed empty-- or the ones that are left down there must be drunk._

A man approaches his right shoulder, and Crowley starts.

“What a state,” he says. “Tut tut. World’s gone to shit, eh, m’boy.”

“Mmm,” replies Crowley. One might think the immortal would be far more long-winded, given the lack of expiry date. It’s quite the opposite in Crowley’s case. He gets to the point and doesn’t waste his performative breath on innanities.

“Tut…” At once, the pressure seems to plummet in the space around the pair. The rainfall grows in intensity; a veritable monsoon, complete with ominous thunder in the background. “... _Tut.”_ The voice is low, slow, dripping--

“Time to stop dicking about, Crowley.” Crowley turns. It’s not an old, sopping local.

“Dagon, you old buzzard,” he says, blinking and clearing his throat to conceal his stupefaction. Hadn’t he turned off the Great Infernal Microwave, so to speak?

“No,” she responds-- apparently to something he hadn’t actually articulated aloud. “No, I could only find you in here.” She grins and fixes her green-grey eyes up at him. “Irritating, that.” The grin spreads, displaying on full her piranha gnashers. She licks them. Her tongue bleeds.

* * *

Crowley’s eyes snap open.

The air on his face is a little bit cold, but his body is buried deep under heavy quilts and sheets. A soft pillow cradles his head; the pilling flannel rubs his cheek. It hurts to breathe-- his ribs are sore. He looks down and notices anew that they’ve been wrapped-- and by someone who knew what they were doing. Something is broken, but it is on the mend.

He’s dimly aware of a lingering dream-- running, breathless, over lumpish fallow ground. Through hedgerows. Twigs and things scratching his face and his hands and a cloying mist.

Through his curtain, the light of morning streams in and he’s reminded that his eyes are sore, too. The sunlight has that quality of sharp coldness that always accompanies her on cold days, and he finds he’s right when he hauls himself over to the window and peeks out. Along the horizon it is bright and yellow, but a band of ominous, churning purple sits atop. The anemic trees shake with the wind. Crowley thinks about wool socks and hopes he has not mislaid his scarf.

He hauls the duvet around his bare shoulders and stands, gingerly taking the few steps down the hall to the kitchen.

It is likely that Aziraphale is still in his living room. It is possible that he is still curled up, asleep on Crowley’s shitty old couch. As Crowley tips out last night’s coffee grounds and makes a fresh pot, he thinks that maybe he can’t handle Aziraphale today-- Aziraphale, with his honest exploration of his own fascinations and fears. Aziraphale, with his earnest eyes with depths Crowley would love to get lost in sometime-- he thinks he could swim forever and never be cold again. It isn’t fair, Crowley thinks-- it isn’t fair that such a burden should be placed on pure hearts such as that one; the burden of caring for someone who cannot and will not and _should not_ lose himself, no matter how beautiful and pure the losing.

The coffee percolates and, like a real creep, Crowley remains standing and peering out of the kitchen door long after he’s confirmed the Presence of Aziraphale on the couch. He is, in fact, still sleeping.

For some reason there is a song stuck in Crowley’s head and he thinks that it is too early for all of this maudeline moosing around, but it is what it is. It’s the pain making him so gloomy, and that will be gone soon.

It starts to rain.

* * *

_Is that all there is?  
_ _If that’s all there is, my friends  
_ _Then let’s keep dancing_

Crowley now has a cup of coffee in his hands, morning light catching the steam in little hints of rainbow in the dusty room. He really should vacuum. Aziraphale shouldn’t get dusty. Aziraphale’s in enough dusty places as it is, he thinks.

He dreamt of Aziraphale, riding by on a white horse, begging Crowley to climb aboard, hand outstretched like Lady Godiva. But the advancing blackness was too fast and he could only scream as Crowley was hauled back into it, voiceless and alone. Now, in the waking world, Crowley’s mouth tastes a little bit bloody; a generalized inflammation making his teeth feel too big, biting the backs of his cheeks. His eyes are bleary and full of gunk. He rearranges himself, still leaning on the doorway, in order to rub them clean and it feels like the silty soil from his dream crept right out into this universe and into his eyes. He hasn’t bothered to find his glasses, so Aziraphale is but a fuzzy cocoon a few yards in front of him, but he feels it when he wakes up all the same.

“Gmmmuh?” Aziraphale stretches where he lays, arms wide. He reaches for his black frames. His back cracks loudly and he tries again. “Good morning, my dear. How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine,” Crowley says, blankly. “I made coffee,” he offers. He blinks and his dry eyes water. A droplet falls down his cheek. He doesn’t have to wonder if this would be his reaction -- at least his body’s reaction, even if his mind couldn’t handle it -- if he were to lose Aziraphale. He turns to get a second cup of coffee and returns, but he has to tuck the corners of the duvet under his elbows to hold it to (or around) himself. He feels like the hedonist king of some distant fantasy world.

“Nice hair,” Aziraphale grins as he accepts the steaming cup, hissing a little at the heated porcelain on his palm and fingers.

“Thanks. I’ll put it into a pompadour sufficient to address my people shortly. But until then--” he winks and raises his cup, then sits on the couch. He wonders why a one-cushion distance feels like a chasm and watches Aziraphale sink into the corner, covered in blankets. He looks like hell but he seems happy enough.

It isn’t until Aziraphale’s _‘what’s that?’_ that he becomes aware he is humming a tune as he hunches over and studies a chip in his mug.

Crowley should not trust his voice-- it creaks and there’s a bubble in his throat and his lungs feel a bit tortured-- but he sings a verse nonetheless.

_“Is that all there is, is that all there is  
_ _If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing  
_ _Let's break out the booze and have a ball  
_ _If that's all there is”_

“I like it.” Aziraphale smiles again. Of course he’s smiling. He’s smiling and he’s looking fondly at Crowley. “Oh. You’ve got a black eye--”

“It’s fine.”

“Goodness.”

* * *

After a while, Crowley gets up to find his notebook, stuffed in a jacket pocket. He makes a note: _what happened in the basement?_

“I had rather a strange nightmare last night,” says Aziraphale, after he’s done changing behind Crowley’s back like he’s the one intruding. As if he could ever intrude. If it were an intrusion, it would be a very welcome one.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. It was--”

His face fills with blood and he looks down at his feet. It’s not politeness, not from Aziraphale. It’s not professional distancing. How could he be embarrassed by his body and his physical presence, and now an unwelcome horror show courtesy of his brain? Crowley’s fingers twitch. He wants to envelop this man inside of his absurd portable blanket-fort and fight his nightmares and his insecurities and make sure he never feels like he doesn’t belong ever again. He’s in my apartment, Crowley thinks, like my own personal bottled sunshine; like a jar of lightning bugs-- but then he feels like a trapper, like he’d robbed the rest of the world of something.

“It was really fucked up, now that I’m thinking about it. Nevermind.”

“Oh. You can tell me-- but, you don’t have to.”

“I will later.”

He shivers and it’s not from the cold apartment.

Crowley toddles back to his room -- Christ, he really is sore -- and drops the blanket back onto the bed. Moggy-- has he always had this cat? He feels like he has, and yet-- has appeared out of nowhere and occupied his former warm spot, and stretches out with a _murr_. Crowley grabs a probably-filthy-but-soft light grey hoodie from the floor, and puts it on slowly as he walks back down the hall and to the kitchen. Standing there is Aziraphale, making more coffee.

“Oh! My _God,_ would you look at your ribs!” Aziraphale puts his hands on Crowley’s chest, stopping the hoodie mid-removal. Crowley stands there with his arms askew, half up and bent at the elbows. He peeks down at the hands now on his torso, mouth covered in thick cotton.

“Hhhwot?” he asks. He can feel heat through the bandages and a shiver runs past his ears and down his spine at the sound of skin on rough paper. He shudders involuntarily and Aziraphale removes his hands-- _more’s the pity_ , thinks Crowley. He’s still bent over and peering at, presumably, the bruising there.

“It’s all purple. That’s just what I can see outside of the bandage. I didn’t know this had happened last night.” He’s speaking directly to Crowley’s stomach, but all Crowley can see is his black mop from above. There’s an edge of panic sneaking into that voice, so Crowley hurries to pull down the sweater.

“I got looked over.”

“Sure you did,” he says, and walks back into the living room.

* * *

Aziraphale stays another night. It’s sort of unspoken that he will-- he makes his apologies and keeps his things obsessively in order; he folds up the spare blankets and fluffs the pillow he used. He steps out for a few hours and picks up groceries without Crowley coming close to complaining about his ribs. He gets back to the apartment with his face pink from the cold; eyes twinkling far too much for someone who’s seen what he has over these last few days.

They mill around and Crowley makes homemade soup from scratch, until Aziraphale sees him start to slump sideways, leaning on counters to compensate, and insists on taking over. Taking a backseat to the cooking, Crowley still insists on perching on the countertop over the dishwasher and he’s not _watching_ Aziraphale, he’s not, he’s not--

He certainly isn’t watching how Aziraphale breathes, or how his shoulders shake with laughter. How his face heats with the joy of their simple, absurd back-and-forth, how he holds himself so _properly_ ; feet practically in ‘ready’ stance, inhaling with his diaphragm and not his chest. The softness of him is a deception, always has been. He’s not watching how a particularly good quip of Crowley’s -- if he does say so himself -- makes Aziraphale throw his head back in laughter. The only reason he isn’t slapping his chest or his belly is the mixing bowl held there by his strong arms, thick hand stilled only for a moment. Crowley laughs and wishes he hadn’t because the ache is deep, but he couldn’t miss a second; not for anything.

There is no state of being; not in life, and not after, that Crowley could not recognize this face. This body. It would not matter if he had thrown in the towel in a fit of defeatism and quit his daily workouts and _‘let himself go’_ , or if he went into hiding from some weird case gone wrong and had to grow out a beard and have greasy hair and live in Wisconsin.

If Crowley were given to draftsmanship, he could draw every last detail of his hands-- calloused and rough from one singular event of frostbite, but still young and therefore with only a dusting of hair and no bulky, distorted veins yet. He could be limping, or sitting, or running, or even possibly dead; and be fully identifiable to Crowley.

The worst part is that Aziraphale’s standing here, in Crowley’s kitchen -- making light-hearted jabs and now _whisking vigorously_ \-- and he isn’t posturing. He isn’t willing Crowley to look at him with calculated moves and touches. He’s just existing, and enjoying himself, and it's torture.

“You have your own aprons?”

“Er, yes?”

“No, I’m impressed. I can’t cook. Last time I tried, it was a horror show. Egg bits. _Egg bits everywhere._ ”

Crowley laughs and he can feel his cheeks overtake his eyes and the corners crinkling. He feels a bit ugly like this but he doesn’t care right now. He can’t picture egg-on-my-face Aziraphale; he’s too fastidious. Self-deprecating for Crowley’s benefit? No, don’t do that. Not for me. _Don’t make yourself smaller to fit into me--_

He probably isn’t.

Aziraphale banishes him back to the couch when his laughter dies and transforms into little pained croaks at any small movement.

“Oh my. Sit down, would you? Or lie down? Is-- is ice good for this? I-- I can’t-- I’m so used to, well,” he snaps his fingers. “You know.”

“I know. They did tell me to lie down, Aziraphale. It’s not your fault.”

“Well then, you can bloody well listen for once--”

“Never really been in my nature, angel.”

“Get.”

* * *

Later, after a dinner that leaves Crowley too full and makes his ribs angry from the added bulk pressing on his diaphragm, Aziraphale makes him go to bed. The _‘oh-I’m-fine’_ smile is a little too strained; it’s more like a grimace and Crowley knows it, so he folds. Too bad his only weekend-- his only weekend off that corresponds with his partner’s--

 _Just in the colleague sense,_ the back of his mind reminds him unhelpfully--

Around two in the morning, Crowley rises. The narcotic from the clinic has worn off. _I’m fine, I’m fine--_ he says, in his imaginary conversation with imaginary Aziraphale. _It’s more annoying than anything. Cocoa? If we lived together I would make him cocoa any time he wanted it--_

Instead of making cocoa or doing anything productive, Crowley stands there in the same ridiculous lump as he had that morning. The living room is blue in the dark but little pools of white-gold reflected moonlight trace a line from the window and just miss him. This time, he’s got to admit that he’s just straight-up, no-excuses, I’ve-crossed-a-line, watching his friend sleep. Maybe he can claim that he walked out to the living room and ran out of steam, which, if he thinks about it, isn’t exactly a lie. The wall is supporting most of his pathetic weight.

He wonders if this is how Aziraphale sleeps at home and he doubts it; wonders if the heightened subconscious alert level keeps him from entering REM sleep. It seems likely-- he’s back in his little duvet chrysalis, his back to the room. The only sign that it isn’t just a pile of blankets on a messy bachelor’s pad sofa is the rise and fall of his even breath and a shock of white hair and the corner of an ear poking out. Crowley hopes he’s warm. He doesn’t usually have to worry about this. If he’s cold himself, he just puts on hockey socks and suffers through. Thinking about another person’s comfort feels like pepper on his tongue -- hot, tingling, but not entirely unwelcome; but it could burn him if he’s not careful. Should he tip-toe through and turn up the old, clunky radiator? Would it wake Aziraphale up? That would never do -- he’s already curled in on himself like his brain expects the worst even when it lets him check out for the night, organs and soft flesh protected by the body-as-cave.

_I could be a blanket. Blanketing presence. Safety blanket. Source of insulation--_

_But you’re cold. You know that. Cold and long like a canned string bean._

_Wet blanket. Insu_ lar _rather than insu_ lating. _Cloying, suffocating._

The breathing increases in pace and the form on the couch tenses, curls further in on itself. There’s a shaking and a shout and Aziraphale’s head turns violently, face shoved fully into the pillow.

Crowley inhales sharply, eyes wide open like a deer in the headlights. This is intrusion. Simply watching was one thing, but the insides of Aziraphale’s brain, his inner workings-- But he doesn’t leave. His feet are planted to the floor, the heel half of them on linoleum, the ball of the foot and the toes on ancient hardwood, and chilled metal right under the arches. He can feel a screw leaving an indent in his skin.

The movement stills and Aziraphale sighs deliberately. He’s awake. _Bollocks._

“Crowley?”

If Crowley were to bolt-- He wants to, but mutinous feet have set down their roots, here. Started families. There’s even a blacksmith’s and a bakery. No, bolting would be worse. Aziraphale persists in believing in the supernatural, despite all he’s seen. He isn’t stupid, but a moonlit spectre in the night; a friend-shaped ghoul taking off on him in the sleep-stained dead of night-- no, that would be a betrayal of trust. _No secrets._

“Crowley.” He sits up. The covers rustle. He’s in silhouette, _but you’re in shadow, like you always are--_ “You okay?”

_I’m always okay. I might be staring down a chasm; a void of my own making-- but I’m okay. Just so long as the craggy cliffs don’t give way; don’t cleave anew and send me to my fate--_

_You should probably speak now, it’s getting weird._

“I.” _Getting weird. Hurry up._ “Couldn’t sleep.”

“Are you in pain, dear?” Aziraphale’s voice is rough. He yawns. Crowley can’t see it but he has a picture in his head -- always inadequate -- of every iteration of those yawns. Like a frame in between frames of some soft animation; exaggerated to complete the overall effect. Chin tucked into neck, mouth agape. Eyes screwed shut, shoulders rolling. A rising sigh that turns into a noise if he’s tired enough, echoing in his barrel chest and finishing off with a shake of his head and his hand scrubbing his face.

“Um. No. I was j--”

He is still able to command despite a second wave of _yawn_. “G’mere.”

He rotates and plants his feet on the floor and tugs his hands through his hair for a moment, elbows on knees.

 _Hoist self off of wall. Like a piece of wet spaghetti coming unstuck from the ceiling. I’m soooo_ sexy _. Exactly what Aziraphale wants; exactly what he needs--_

“They certainly did a number on you,” Aziraphale tuts as he leans into the new weight on the cushion next to him _too close too close I want to lean in and then he will know I’m not just--_ and Aziraphale is slinging an arm over Crowley’s shoulders and chasing away the gooseflesh.

“I’m fine.”

His long back hunched over pinches the busted rib and puts strain on the bruised flesh, but Aziraphale’s shoulder is warm against his cheekbone. _It’s too hard and you’re going to drool--_ but Aziraphale jostles him to sit up straight after a moment anyhow. _He’s tired and you’re heavy and angle-y._ One last rub in apology and he gets up, walks over to the kitchen and audibly rifles through the medicine cabinet by the stove. A rattling pill-bottle, with no more than four tablets inside, indicates he’s found what he’s looking for, followed by the sound of the tap; and he returns with cup and bottle.

Crowley takes them and pops one tablet, drinking the water as fast as possible to avoid the inevitable chalky bitterness on the back of his tongue. He puts the water on the table. It’ll leave a ring, probably. Good; it’ll match the others.

Hands close around a long, bony wrist. It’s purple with someone else’s grip; fingers far harsher than the ones that hold it now. Crowley hadn’t even noticed it, but now he watches the mottled skin dimly as Aziraphale drags his right wrist across his body to examine it. He doesn’t fuss. He _tsks_ once though, running his thumb over the delicate tissue; travelling over tendons and little blue veins.

His voice is hard when he finally speaks, and something that flashes over his dark eyes says he’s surprised himself.

“Don’t you _ever_ go alone like that again.”

“But--” _Laugh it off_. _Wait, no. Stop that; it’s pissed him off._ “Okay. I won’t.”

“I know it’ll happen again. Try not to.”

His hand is still cradling Crowley’s wrist; his head is down, studying it. He traces the outline of the bruise. He could grab it, grip it tight, grind the bones together like that man had done-- the pain would be welcome. It would chase away the feeling of another presence on Crowley’s skin; replace it. A hurt that was earned. They’re angled toward one another, perched on the sofa. Crowley turns his hand where it’s being held and Aziraphale starts to pull away; like he needs to back away from a line he’s sure he’s crossed -- _oh, but you haven’t, you haven’t --_ but Crowley takes hold of his thick forearm. Aziraphale still won’t look at him. He reaches with his free hand and tilts Aziraphale’s jaw with a light touch. Meets his eyes. Pills are starting to work but that’s okay. It makes it easier to lie to himself, to blame the fall on something else.

_Hand still grazing his jaw. Thick bone under warm skin, and just a few inches away is the soft place where I can feel his pulse. I’m still leaning forward-- but so is he. Eyes shut-- I’ve really lost my moorings now. Drifting out to sea-- I meet his lips with mine._

Kisses him.

The hand on Aziraphale’s jaw moves back, slides into his hair. It’s soft. Breath against Crowley’s cheek.

Kiss him again. _He’s taking my hand._

_I’m falling--_

Aziraphale breaks the kiss and Crowley opens his eyes. Finds himself laying back on the sofa. A tap on his shoulder. He sits up. A pillow is tucked behind his head. It smells like Aziraphale. The spare blankets are placed over his body -- _I’m not sore anymore. Come back --_ and they smell like Aziraphale. _Maybe don’t be obvious about_ smelling _them right now? Oh, but I need to--_ He inhales deeply but his eyes flutter closed and it probably just looks like he’s falling asleep.

Because he is.

He barely hears Aziraphale saying goodnight; feeling his forehead, and smoothing his hair back, and walking away.

* * *

A day more is spent. A day; a night.

Crowley wakes on the couch. Aziraphale is already awake. The sound of busily making coffee. It’s strange how someone’s movements can _sound_ like a good mood.

Ribs still ache. Crushed wrist-- yep. Worse has happened. Former resident of hell, here. Worse will happen still. Crowley stays where he is.

* * *

No more opiates (not going down that road; the 1890s were fun and all but it’s worse now-- besides, he can no longer magic himself out of addiction). Paracetamol does jack shit. Crowley gets through by complaining, loudly, to his empty apartment.

He forgets he isn’t supposed to go anywhere until he tries to put his pants on. He then realizes he has awoken two hours too late-- and _someone_ has switched off his alarm and made coffee and left a sad pastry out for him on the stove.

Then, he makes the mistake of thinking about the body.

_Don’t imagine Aziraphale lying there on the pavement. Don’t imagine the inside of his skull; his unrecognizable face-- the sallow skin, waxy with death, the eyes looking forward to nothing ever again. Don’t imagine that. Don’t imagine his blood--_

Aziraphale cuts himself while slicing an avocado.

“Crowley? Can you hand me--? Goodness, that was stupid--” Sounds of stumbling around, searching one-handed, various and sundry items falling from the small medicine cabinet by the stove. The tap turning on (the pipes clanging as they come to life), the sound of the water hitting the metal sink changes as a hand is placed under the stream. “Where are you? I can’t find the--”

Crowley had not noticed Aziraphale coming in, home for lunch (a rarity).

_Nothing has changed in a week since I kissed him, and now he’s bleeding all over the kitchen. That’s got to be some kind of sign._

In the bathroom, Crowley shoves a stack of gauze and disinfecting spray and medical tape into the pockets of his shabby housecoat and moves to Aziraphale’s side in the middle of the linoleum. He must have moved too quickly; too silently, because Aziraphale jumps and tenses. It’s followed by a smile that blooms across his face. Crowley already holds his hands in his own, putting pressure on the sliced palm without looking at it.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I’d rather not. Not just yet, anyway.”

Aziraphale gulps and he doesn’t say _‘so does that mean you’re admitting--’. He stares up dumbly at Crowley, who tucks his chin to his neck and stares at his flowing, red blood. It’s flooded two squares of gauze already, but it seems to have slowed some._

“You’ve sliced your lifeline in half, Aziraphale.”

“O--kay. It’s not that bad.”

“Disinfectant.”

“Hmm?”

He doesn’t get a response. Wordlessly, Crowley drags Aziraphale around by the hand. He cleans the wound again, applies a dressing, and wraps the hand neatly.

Stark red droplets of blood start to dry on the floor.

“Can I have my hand back?” Aziraphale says, when they’ve stood in silence for three full minutes.

“Never,” comes the reply.

Aziraphale reaches up with his free, unmarred hand and takes the point of Crowley’s chin. He stands on the tips of his toes. Crowley meets him halfway and they kiss until Aziraphale is running late.

When he’s gone, Crowley falls asleep on the couch, his face pressed into the back of it. It still, _still_ smells like Aziraphale. He wonders if, after you’ve kissed someone twice and they return the favour, if it’s still considered creepy to find things that smell like them.

If the question begins with any iteration of _‘is it creepy…’_ then the answer is always _yes._

It isn’t fair; seeing Aziraphale’s hand assaulted like that. Crowley curls in on himself. There’s blood on the front of his housecoat; he knows that. He won’t wash it until Aziraphale remarks on it, and then he can claim he didn’t notice. He should concede that he’s been alone for a little too long; never one to take very well to the concept of ‘leave’.

Those hands -- already so marked by the usual passage of time and application of difficult work -- shouldn’t be leaving life blood all over the kitchen floor. Spilling it down the drain. They’re blunt like blunt-force tools; like they could cause blunt-force trauma if need be (he has needed to). They can rub rough across the back of a hand, over the webbing between thumb and forefinger, rubbing friction and reassurance into the skin. The deep crease between whorls on calloused fingertips, rough and ridged, leaving his unique signature on a spun piece of pottery. Imagine him, smears of clay on his face; both fresh, wet, and dry and cracking. Much better. Better than the hollow overlay of death across Aziraphale’s bright, sunny face that Crowley’s brain supplies every time he closes his eyes. Every time he thinks of the corpse in the alley; ever since the maniac with the pipe-wrench had--

His phone vibrates and migrates half an inch across the floor.

_[SMS received. unlock to read]_

_got a lead. maybe. guy who worked with vic and that paper hanger back in the day. u kno... the guy who said he didnt know the vic... lol._

_how u doing? u looked off this A.M._

_dont worry_

For some reason, that makes Crowley worry a little bit more. He can’t allow that, needs to shove _that_ little reaction down, deep in a dusty corner of his chest.

The phone buzzes again in Crowley’s hand where he holds it against his sternum, eyes closed.

_need anything?_

_i swear i am looking for apartments_

Sometimes, in verbal conversation, Crowley wishes he could stop time; look at the words someone had spoken to him and parse through them like he can on a phone. Sometimes, like now, he hardly has that option even in written messaging.

_That’s all right. I’m bothering you-- my apologies._

It’s hard to gauge affection levels via text. Unfortunately, the same is often true of face-to-face conversation, but at least there is a tone of voice-- betraying tenderness, shock, anger… In the confines of the apartment, it echoes around. Perhaps that’s the very reason Crowley doesn’t trust it. Cloistered domesticity. Much different than the street, where it bounces around in the alleys, sure, but then off into the sky. Little smiles can’t be over-interpreted in the harsh light of day. Desire can be transmitted through one hand taking another, but there’s an opportunity to run. Flee. Scream for help. Or follow it into a hired car and back to an apartment.

Crowley could ask, he supposes, rather than stare dumbly at a splat of blood that’s rapidly turning brown.


	5. Show me

* * *

Phone buzzes again.

_On my way home._

_Home is a dangerous word,_ Crowley thinks.

He has slipped his long legs-- in black sweats this time, boredom making pajamas less and less attractive but the lingering ache barring him from actual _pants_ \-- through the bars of what can very generously be called the ‘balcony’. It’s just a sliding door in the bedroom that opens into the chasm between high-rise buildings, only a waist-high cast iron grate to stop you from tumbling forward. He kicks his legs and presses his head against the cold metal and shivers. He’s recording ambient sounds.

The street sounds different in a snowstorm; fat flakes absorbing footfalls and shouts and leaving him with a city soundscape that sounds farther away than it usually does.

“I’ve been waiting for so long.”

“It’s only been a few hours.”

_“No. It’s been--”_

_“Don’t say ‘forever’.”_

_Your feet tangled in my sheets. Can’t pay attention to a single other thing. Don’t want to._

“Show me.”

_Can’t. Shaking my head. Neck straight no side-to-side I’m an earnest man, not a snake with a mouse in his sights, I’m naked, I’m naked, I’m naked-- Lower lip hangs, eyes stare._

It can’t be real. So much else hasn’t been real.

 _Show me._ Many meanings. _Maybe I will dance for you. Maybe I’m in a strange new nebula, I’ve reached new heights, but I’ve never been so shatteringly sober._

_Here I stand before him, like I never stood before anything before. Though I stood naked before God, though I stood naked before my God though I stood naked before_

no God.

With that, it’s over.

 _“Out of the depths,_ ” Crowley’s voice rattles through his quaking lungs, over a raw throat. “Out of the depths, I cried out to you…” a step forward. A kiss, a kiss, a kiss-- top lip, point of pert nose, third eye, each cheek a connection to no more Hosts than our shared soul-- “Out of the depths, I cried out to you. O, Angel.”

“Crowley--” Aziraphale sits on the bed, knees splayed, the empty space filled with reluctant long-time-coming lovers. “We’re almost there. But,” a small shake of the head, almost imperceptible, but his eyes never leaving Crowley’s. “My goodness, show me your wings.”

“Ahh--” no holding back now, _not if I could not even then._ The sting of glass shards slicing. Horrendous. Black as a crow’s wings, one that took a nosedive into the firepit at the family picnic, the crow who’d had enough and so-long-cruel-worlded it straight into the corndogs. Out they come and they rip Crowley apart. Distantly, he feels shame-- in the nakedness of his soul and a rented human form that still manages to bear the scars on his essence. Then the realization-- _He must see--_

He likes the presence of the bed. His own thoughts interrupt him here. Crowley never did keep close attention to the plot. But it’s a tie-in.

“My dear?”

_My burning one?_

asks Aziraphale, looking up. It’s a trick of the light, surely; his eyebrows look like they’ve been singed off. “What’s a tie-in?”

Fuck. Mouth connections.

“Beds.” Chews his lip.

Aziraphale holds him around the hips, warm face

_(which one? man? ox? lion, or eagle?)_

against Crowley’s belly, breath whispering through hair there. He rolls his head and presses his nose into the skin there. The light pressure on the cartilage of his nose feels oddly nice. Too human, too close to what sneezes feel like and that just makes him think of seven of them and little deaths. He pouts his lips to kiss the skin.

“Beds.”

“Not following.” More kisses. Tailored fabric, so close that he goes cross eyed trying to focus on it, and a *fancy snake belt buckle that came out of Crowley’s preferred oofy lifestyle, surely. “Rather on the nose, isn’t it?” Hold onto Crowley’s hips tighter, kiss the skin again and again and feel the odd sensation of increasingly coarse, curly hair against that softness.

“I sleep to avoid. It’s part of why Hell got all squinty-- too human.” He cradles Aziraphale’s flaxen head, brushes his hand under his soft ear-lobes, and around the back of his skull; rakes his fingers through his locks. He’s rewarded with more kisses and a sense of urgency and a familiar rush of blood. “But it isn’t. If they sleep for a hundred years, they’re dead. I do it, I end up spawning _Rip Van Winkle.”_

Calloused fingers work open the belt buckle, the zipper; do away with the briefs.

“You’re gorgeous.”

_Does it matter who said it? It’s in the air.”_

_OUR MOTHER WHO AIN’T IN HEAVEN, DEAR GOD LET THIS BE REAL_

_I hope I’m awake for this_

Deft, calloused fingers-- they’re clean but the books made their mark long, long ago-- let the trousers fall where they may and something other than silk linen and cotton fills his vision. A matching hand holds on to the back of Crowley’s thigh for dear life. He isn’t sure what to do with himself, let alone what’s in front of him. No reason for that, stray angels being what they are. Yet it’s still too much, with Crowley flushed and everywhere before him.

Aziraphale reaches out, and strokes him. The resulting jolt and twitch under his touch shakes off some cold, metal shackle in the depths of his chest. _Immediate feedback. Swift analysis of the sample. Clear visual display, aural feedback a benefit._

Above him, Crowley has dropped his head. His jaw is slack, his eyes unfocused. He keeps stroking Aziraphale’s hair, and his shoulder, and his cheek with the back of his fingers.

 _I need to see him unravel,_ thinks Aziraphale. And one day, he will-- he’ll take him apart, atom by atom. He’ll see his scars from the inside. But for now--

Aziraphale takes him in his mouth, hand working what his mouth can’t reach; exploring. He uses his lips and tongue to take, to destroy, to rebuild

_One day, when we have more time--_

_“Angel?”_ The voice above him sounds lost. Aziraphale backs off with a _pop_.

_I want to fuck him. I want to lay him bare, lose myself inside his very being--_

Crowley’s knees go weak. He catches himself on Aziraphale’s shoulder, the colour in his face deepening; the hollows of his cheeks flushing crimson along with his chest.

_Oh. Heard that did you?_

_I surely did._

_Good._

_I love you._

_I love you._

_I love you._


	6. Sulphur

* * *

“Crowley?” He’s _gone._ “Crowley!”

He wakes up comfortable and well-rested, but angry as a wet hen. Bed, comfy, made, and slept in by only one.

_“Not again.”_

* * *

She rose from his bed on a Monday morning and slid her slim, hairy legs into a pair of smart black trousers. Crowley watched from the bed, languishing under a single sheet, hair slicked back with sweat.

“I gotta go,” she said, looking over her shoulder at him. She wiggled her bottom into the pants, and he watched. “Okay?”

She wasn’t a mark or a soul to be culled. She was warm, she was beautiful, she was funny, she was human. And he needed company.

“You gonna be okay, man? Like, you seemed pretty, uh—”

“I’m fine,” he said. Not harsh, but he hardened his eyes from the point in space he was staring off into and tried to look fine. Kind of naked, but fine. He cracked a toothy smile in her direction.

“Okay. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

Probably. She was gone with the click of the door behind her. He’d been scabbing around Soho for the last couple of years, getting high and getting a leg over, over, and over again.

He sank back into the bed, head heavy on the cheap grey pillow. Sighing, he vowed to stop all this tomorrow, knowing full well he wouldn’t.

* * *

A son is born from the union. Crowley does not know this, until the boy dies and sorrow rings.

* * *

Aziraphale, in service of the LORD, continues to perform his duties. The Earth has been made; separated from the Heavens, and there is talk of a Garden. He forgets about the scarlet-haired Seraphim who fell.

* * *

_Woah, don’t look back to see..._

A CERTAIN DEMON (of the Lord, arguably I mean can’t she take credit? All that ego I guess. Means you can’t bear to see your failures, I guess! I AM A DEMON OF THE LORD, just as the slug is a slug of the LORD--) A CERTAIN DEMON remembers it rather less mopey, and pedestrian, _Angel._

You did hear a rumblin’.

Satan cries, _“take aim!”_

* * *

“And then-- it wasn’t the Michangel Archm. St. Archael the Michangel. The An-- the Ang-- Th--. Fuck. The Asshole in Charge.”

Crawley rips his hands through his hair. _Get it out get it out getitoutgetitoutjustSAYITfuck._ The sharpened black talons can’t be seen for the thicket of fiery auburn keratin strands--

_STRANDS? SCALES. RED, BLACK, YELLOW_

If anyone is wondering if snakes crawl, the answer is that they do not. God is rather specific about that distinction. Snakes slither, beetles crawl, bees buzz, ducks waddle (but these properties do not, in fact, determine a given species’ phyla as it turns out but then an obsession with classifying every aspect of the natural world is a _feature-or-bug?_ of man.

ON THE THIRD DAY, WHILE GOD MASTURBATED ON THE COUCH, THE SIMULATION ALERTED HER TO THE IMPENDING CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION. THE NOTIFICATION WENT UNREAD UNTIL ABOUT FIVE WHEN SHE ORDERED PIZZA AND GOT BACK TO HER GAME).

No, Snakes do not crawl. It can be argued that snakes scoot. On their scutes. Snakes slither and go hiss and were _very_ well behaved on the Ark. Crawly is so-named because that’s rather what happens when every last one of your celestial bones has been broken but your heart continues to beat, even as you fry. He doesn’t quite remember what he was, to be honest. Then again, the Bible doesn’t _technically_ say that the car salesman in the Garden of Eden was a snake; it’s just that the form seemed to really jive with his personality, so he kept it.

_Poor Lilith, didn’t deserve that_

_God’s listening to some of her records. She’s--_ foo, shit. _Shit, I made those toads strong, brother. Anyway. God’s stoned and singing along to her records._

_“Let my people know my wisdom, fill the land with smoke…_

_Better run through the jungle…”_

* * *

“Michael.” God looks down at her bleeding breasts. “Michael, in the last-- in the last large chunk of chunks of time which can be grouped into equidistant packets of cosmologically significant time-- erm. Chunks. In how many of those have I indicated that I give an acrobatic mating act about the affairs of my children?” Her voice is, of course, imbued with a timeless, poetic quality that could not be ascribed human qualities. She belches.

“I am not well.”

Michael is prim, a tower of brilliant galaxies. Hair tumbles down from her crown, a shining river of data and information. It’s bound at her temples with golden rules. She spans light years, back straight, glittering with bouncing electrons. _Eyeh_ reaches out, twirling a stray strand around her forefinger, pinching it with her thumb.

(the arrow of time is irrelevant)

“You are the last. Pour out and become like the healing waters over my Heathen.”

“did you mean Eden?

Heaven?

or somewhere in the middle"

In the rushing down, something of Michael is lost in translation.

* * *

_His brain’s gone rotten down here._

_fetal position, hands cradled under his cheek. crowley stares into the darkness -- there’s multi coloured noise in his vision where there should be black-- and he rocks a little. he wiggles his hips to chase away the stiffness. he stares straight ahead and ignores the certain and persistent knowledge-- feeling-- knowledge-- no-- it isn’t it -- it isn’t there_

_It is not there._

_And yet the harder he focuses on the fact that it is not real the more real it becomes. without looking back, he knows. it is a horrified space but it’s the drawing of a haunted child; fat scribbles over a dark 3d room where a 2d drawing has no right to exist._

_yet it has mass. its weight on the bed is as certain in crowley’s head as is the tickle of his dry nostril as he sucks in breaths and the pulse in his neck from the tightness of the tendons there as a result of his clenching his teeth._

_in - out_

_it’s smiling not because he sees it but because he feels it, again, again it grows and looks over and tries to get him to LOOK AT ME --_

_it might be not real but thinking that it’s not real just makes it fucking bigger, so crowley tries. he breathes in again he tries to laugh it off, even, and that works for a second IT’S GETTING BIGGER but then it just makes him tremble._

_he has to lie down and accept it not as unreal but as an hallucination, which is about as real as you can get._

_but-- surely he’s wrong. did he always have a stuffed toy on his bed? it’s round and fat, made of a soft black material. it has six legs, a pair of floppy, shimmery wings, and two huge compound eyes made from red-sequined fabric._

_“Erm.”_

_The fly says nothing but he’s certain it scowls at him and asks why he’s late._

_“Ah. Not real. I see.”_

_He stretches, rolls over, and goes back to sleep. Time to find Aziraphale._

“How do souls get saved, I wonder.”

Crowley’s tattered wings were on full display. Every now and then, an onyx feather brushed the face of his Angelic companion. He didn’t turn to look and wait for an answer, but stared up into the gathering storm clouds above.

As a pair, they often found themselves in this configuration. Staring up into an organic sky, looking for a God who wasn’t there.

“Oh--? Aziraphale looked to his right. He smiled, a little nervous, tucking his chin toward his neck. “Hadn’t covered that one, had you?”

All he received in return was the eyebrow.

“Right. Well, you know. Accept, um. God’s love. And, well, I mean-- if they’re truly, er, damned, then I suppose--”

“You don’t have a clue either, do you?”

“Of course I do! One must accept the love of--”

“Don’t give me that churching crap, Angel! You don’t know! I’m looking at your cherubic little face right now, and _you don’t know._ ”

“Well.”

Crowley made a sort of ‘toh!’ noise, but he was smiling.

“I’ve told you. We aren’t to know the true will of God,” Aziraphale said in the general direction of his feet.

“It’s just always seemed a little bit, well, arbitrary to me,” Crowley returned. The argument lurking in his brain had gone to sleep before he could let it out. He and Aziraphale stood and watched the horizon until the sky went black.

“Angel?”

“Yes? What?”

“I don’t _smell_ evil, do I? Chunks of sooty demon energy that you really can’t shove inside a human form-- like snake eyes.”

“Snake? I don’t--”

“Sulphur? Just oozing everywhere, and never bothered to warn m--”

“Stop. You don’t smell like sulphur.”

* * *

“Hold my hand.”

Aziraphale does so. There is no explosion; no event horizon, no supermassive black hole. In a way, Crowlely wishes there were-- perhaps they could finally, truly see the other side of things, that incredible truth known not even to God.

Instead, there is body heat, and there is love.


End file.
